


this irritating heart of mine

by Xairathan



Category: Fate/Grand Order
Genre: Gen, incest shippers don't interact dot knifeemoji
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-22
Updated: 2019-11-22
Packaged: 2021-02-17 21:46:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21516955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xairathan/pseuds/Xairathan
Summary: About things and little brothers left in Owari, and things that aren't
Relationships: Oda Kipposhi | Avenger & Oda Nobukatsu (Fate), Oda Nobukatsu & Oda Nobunaga | Archer
Comments: 4
Kudos: 38





	this irritating heart of mine

Nobukatsu had always lagged behind his big sister. She was shorter, but her stride was longer, surer. It had been that stride that had carried her through the sliding double doors to their father’s hall, a stilted laugh of “It can’t be helped!” ringing from her lips.

That was the last time he heard Nobunaga laugh like that. Her voice filled with iron and her eyes with an unearthly chill. It was not his sister he’d glimpsed in the corridors, but a monster with her face. The big sister he’d spent so much of his life chasing the heels of would have straightened his cap after he bowed, told him to hold himself up straighter.

But Nobunaga said, “Don’t look so pathetic. I need someone to look after the castle while I’m gone.”

It couldn’t be helped that she’d said that; that’s what Nobukatsu had told himself, as he watched the only familiar part of his big sister recede in the direction of war. He didn’t believe it for a second, not when all the sheer force of will behind those words was matching towards the northwestern border of Owari. He didn’t believe it when his sister left with all the force of the Oda name behind her, but he tried. As much as Nobukatsu hated it, that was all he knew to do: try.

* * *

This corridor, between the boiler room and the mess hall, just before noon. Nobukatsu tugs his fingers through his ponytail, reaches the end, tries to squeeze the restlessness out of the perpetual flame at its tip. Maybe today will be the day his big sister has time for him.

Nobunaga’s voice announces her coming long before she actually appears in view. That had been the first part of her to change, to become larger than life; with it, she’d led her men into a fool’s charge, and emerged victorious. In Chaldea, all that voice does is call for someone, Okita, to hurry up before all the good food is gone.

A blur of black and red flashes by, followed by a slower, ambling woman dressed in pink. She doesn’t pay Nobukatsu any attention: idle Servants are hardly a rare sight, after all. She doesn’t see the way Nobukatsu stares, eyes narrowed, at arms that seem unfit to hold a rifle and the faintest hint of crimson still speckled across her lower lip. How could someone like this be the one his big sister chooses to spend her time with, he wonders?— and then the patter of footsteps fade, and they’re gone.

Nobukatsu lifts his hands up before his eyes and stares at the shadows they throw back at him: he’s solid, manifested, visible. As usual, he’s been left to himself again. Enclosed by identical walls and the same thoughts he’d carried with him during his lifetime, Nobukatsu thinks nothing of his failure and wonders if perhaps Nobunaga will notice him next time, if tomorrow will be when things go back to the way they’d been.

* * *

There was a time when happiness had been something as simple as firebugs in the grass and a cicada clasped crudely between Nobunaga’s tiny palms. There had been a time when its sound was the insect songs of summer and his laughter mingling with Nobunaga’s in the swaying air. Summer had stayed the same, but no part of it had followed Nobunaga once she left the fields. Her laughter had become synonymous with smoke and the stench of black powder, the crack of musket fire.

There had been only one time Nobukatsu had seen his sister with a gun in hand and no smile on her face, and if there’d been any beyond that, he’d never known them.

Nobukatsu understood his sister well, even at that bitter end. He doesn’t know what to make of the Nobunaga who steals star-shaped sugar candy from the mess hall and pilfers dango from between Okita’s fingertips. He struggles to place the sound of her glee, aged and worn but free of bloodlust. Nobunaga’s smile is the same as the one from those distant days, and that if nothing else tugs at the knot bobbing unevenly in Nobukatsu’s throat.

Nobukatsu had thought he’d always be able to understand his sister’s happiness. After all, it was his: what she wanted, he scrambled for; what she shouted, he did without hesitation. Looking at that bright-eyed grin, he imagines the big sister he knew to still linger in Chaldea’s halls, waiting to be drawn up like water from the river.

(Caught up in his hope, Nobukatsu forgets that no matter how tightly he’d held the river, it had always escaped him— but back then, Nobunaga had laughed at him, and he had been happy for it.)

* * *

Nobukatsu isn’t strong enough to stay materialized for long. It’s a testament to the times that he does, that he’s managed to get them down as consistently as they are. The rest of the time, he’s drifting in the in-between of dreams and the reality he’s anchored himself to, following the sound of his sister’s voice.

In this place, sometimes the past comes close enough to touch. Nobukatsu never knows which Nobunaga it is that he reaches blindly for, only that he’s always too late. The Nobunaga he draws up is always one who’s left behind the nickname of ‘fool of Owari’, traded lazy days spent down at the river for the castle’s high-ceilinged sanctum.

The truth is, he knows his big sister is gone. She’d been gone from the day her mentor took his sword to his belly. He’d lost her when she’d shed her tattered shirt for chain mail and a wooden practice sword for iron, and he hadn’t been able to stop her.

No one could’ve stopped Nobunaga, not even him— that’s just how she was back then. But now, now they’re free of their time and their clan, Nobukatsu thinks, and things could be as they once were (forgetting that Owari no longer stands, and its fool is long gone).

A shift in the air of Chaldea, in the magic that lets Nobukatsu manifest: ah, it’s about that time again. Willing himself back into being, Nobukatsu finds his post beneath the long tunnel of buzzing lights and waits, in vain, for the Nobunaga he knew to pass by.

* * *

It had been a simple matter to impersonate Nobunaga: after all, Nobukatsu had known her best, at least back then. In the dust of the singularity he’d created, he feels no fire but the one clinging persistently to his hair, no hint of the spark he’d been chasing. He could quote and mimic his sister all he wanted, but Nobukatsu knew he was lacking. No amount of fake confidence or shows of force could ever quite replace the real thing.

He should have known, from that, what the outcome of his plot would’ve been. Nobunaga accepted only perfection, and this world he’d made was far from that. It remained, in its most basic form, the only thing Nobukatsu could claim to know enough about to bring forth in such detail: an expression of longing that, like himself, had been lost in fire.

The only difference is that Nobunaga hadn’t killed him that time. The thought amounts to little more than a pang in Nobukatsu’s chest. Nobunaga’s passed him by again today, too. Some things, second chances or not, remain unchanged. The clan hadn’t come to Nobukatsu until they needed a figurehead; Nobunaga had told him of some of what she’d been taught, but never in full, because he wasn’t meant to lead the clan. In life, in death, and in this limbo, Nobukatsu has never been anyone’s first choice.

* * *

If Nobukatsu could be said to have one talent, it would be finding places to hide. From the dust gathered on the shelves and hanging from the flickering light, no one even knows that this one off-color wall panel is hiding an old supply closet.

Nobukatsu might be proud of it, if hiding was a useful skill, but he’s an Oda. His family name is carved into history by his older sister, the warlord who nearly unified Japan. History makes no mention of him, the one who hid in secret passages to cry, save for as the weak and pathetic brother who had failed to rebel against Nobunaga.

Nobukatsu’s place beside Nobunaga is one of failure. The sad part, what stings him to his trembling core, is that history isn’t wrong. He’d never achieved anything, never reached his prime, he’d never grown up; the form he always manifests in is proof of that. He’d tried so hard to bring the smile of the past back to his big sister’s face, and failed in that, too.

Nothing had spoken of that failure more than the cool barrel of Nobunaga’s rifle pressed against his forehead and smoke from the burning floors below rising between the planks digging into his knees. In the dim light of this lone, struggling bulb, it’s not hard for Nobukatsu to imagine he’s back in that room.

“I leave the rest to you, big sister,” he mumbles into his knees, so he never forgets the way the words sting against his mouth.

The flash of light he remembers sparks in front of his eyes, but it’s no rifle shot: it’s the door being pulled aside, a shadow falling over him, the fool of Owari’s shocked face awash in the incoming stream of brightness.

* * *

Nobukatsu doesn’t understand what he’s looking at, at first. It’s not uncommon for a Heroic Spirit to encounter a variant of themselves in Chaldea, but Nobunaga has never thought of herself as anyone but Oda Nobunaga, the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven. There shouldn’t be any way two of his big sister could manifest— but of course there would be. There was always the part of her that she’d left behind along with Nobukatsu, along with her childhood name, in those days before loss and betrayal had become so familiar to them.

“Uh…” Kippoushi stammers, trying to run a hand through their tangled hair and only succeeding in getting it caught. “What’re you— ah, well, are you okay?”

With few exceptions, all Heroic Spirits remember their lifetimes no matter what part of it they were pulled from. This big sister sounds too mellowed to be the fool of Owari, but they look the same, everything from the leather wrapped haphazardly around their wrists to the two belts needed to hold up the gilded tassels they’d become so fond of wearing.

Kippoushi shoves a hand out toward him— impulsively, or perhaps because Nobukatsu is, no matter what, still their brother. “Come on,” they say, “let’s go somewhere and talk. You can’t be comfortable in there.”

Instinctively, as always, Nobukatsu scrambles to obey his big sister. It’s not until Kippoushi is pulling him down the hallway, fingers wrapped tight over Nobukatsu’s sleeve, that he realizes that this is what he’s wanted, too: this connection that was lost with Kippoushi’s name back in Owari.

* * *

There was a time when Nobukatsu would have given anything, even himself, for his sister’s happiness. That had made him a fool, easy to sway: the first time he betrayed Nobunaga, he’d convinced himself he was doing it for her sake, that once the clan had another leader, things could go back to the way they’d been.

He’d failed, and for both their sakes, Nobunaga had sent him away. Nobukatsu should’ve realized an end for what it was, but how could he? His dreams were still the childish ones of boys playing with wooden swords and running through the hillside. That was the only end he would’ve been satisfied with; that, or letting his big sister come and burn him down with her new black powder, him and everyone who’d goaded him into turning on her.

His second rebellion was as much for his own sake as Nobunaga’s. If asked, he’d say he’d done it for her, but the truth is that Nobukatsu was selfish. Guilt and grief were foreign to him, and foreigners had no place in this land. He’d tried to push them away, pushed them back, pushed them onto his sister.

When Nobunaga came to the uppermost floor of his castle, Nobukatsu knew he’d forced the inevitable. He’d entrusted the rest to his big sister and claimed to be satisfied, but in this awakening after death, now Nobukatsu knows the truth. He, as much as everyone else in the clan, had killed the big sister he knew: he’d seen that familiar spark die from her eyes, just before she pulled the trigger.

* * *

In those days in Owari, Nobukatsu had cried as much as he does now— maybe even more. Kippoushi seems used to it, keeping a gentle hand on Nobukatsu’s back while he wipes his eyes on the edges of his cape and the flame at the end of his hair sputters with his constant sniffling. There are no harsh words like Nobukatsu expects, no sharp voice telling him to stop crying and pick himself up. It would seem Kippoushi’s had more than their fair share of these sorts of days, or at the very least, knows them well enough to let Nobukatsu cry his out into damp blotches on the hem of his cloak.

“Hey, Katsu?” they say. “You don’t have to listen to what I tell you, but just hear me out, alright?”

Of course Nobukatsu would, and of course he’d listen. Maybe, he realizes, that’s the whole point, having that choice.

“I didn’t have to start taking things seriously,” Kippoushi is saying, “but I decided to. If not, they’d have gone for you or torn the whole clan to shreds, and then where would we be?” They laugh— long, rolling, the sound of forgotten youth and a happiness that Nobukatsu thought lost forever. It had lived on in his big sister all this time, one wrested from the clan and shaped by her own whims. It was only Nobukatsu, unable to recognize its form, who’d thought it gone.

* * *

There are hints of the familiar to be found in Chaldea— the ghost of the fool of Owari, worn down by living as the Demon King; this feeling of standing on a blade’s edge, poised to fall. The difference this time is who’s behind him: not the traitors so eager to depose Nobunaga, but his big sister, poking at Nobukatsu’s shoulder. “Come on,” they say, just as if it’s another day in Owari and Kippoushi is prodding Nobukatsu into yet another stupid dare.

This hallway between the boiler room and the mess hall; the digital clocks just approaching the threshold of noon. Kippoushi taps their fingers against their hip, gold tassels swaying with their impatience. They look nothing like the Kippoushi Nobukatsu remembers, hanging from the highest reaches of trees Nobukatsu was too afraid to climb; they look nothing like the Nobunaga that had unhesitatingly leveled her rifle between her brother’s eyes. This Kippoushi is some cross between them, a mix of the wear of a thousand campaigns and the easily excited son of a warlord who hadn’t yet tasted the bitterness of reality.

Both of them know that flavor well now— perhaps that’s why big sister is so partial to sweets, and Nobukatsu so quick to emulate her. Nobukatsu’s mouth fills with it even now, biting back hot tears brimming with its sting. It’s impossible for him to deny it any longer, that no matter their form, the big sister Nobukatsu had sought for so long is gone.

That doesn’t have to mean an end— that’s the point of this Chaldea, Kippoushi had told him, to be a place to abandon your grief and find meaning in this separate existence. The past, miserable as it had been, had its fair share of treasured memories: play-fighting in the forests, splashing about in the shallows.

From down the corridor, the sound of clanking metal: “She’s coming,” Kippoushi says, looking to Nobukatsu. With only the slightest bit of hesitation, Nobukatsu steps forward, through the years of parting and betrayal, to claim the happiness he’d been chasing.

* * *

Nobukatsu doesn’t so much start forward as stagger into his sister’s path, the two of them going down in a tangle of limbs and gold-tipped hats. Nobunaga is heavier than Nobukatsu expects, but perhaps he should’ve thought of that— the last time they’d ended up like this was its own lifetime ago.

“Katsu!” Nobunaga groans, frantically scrambling to her feet and dusting herself off. “You got in my way! Now she’ll catch me for sure!”

“Sorry!” is Nobukatsu’s instinctive reply, one drowned out by the angry shout of “Nobu!” that ripples towards them. Okita storms around the corner, hoisting Nobunaga up by the collar with an impudence that would’ve gotten Nobukatsu a tongue-lashing to remember. All Nobunaga does is flail helplessly while Okita divests her pockets of stolen sweets, scolding her all the while. She’s like Kippoushi, Nobukatsu realizes, in that she’s changed: the hard edges worn into her by war have softened with time and the rest she hadn’t been granted in life.

“Is he okay?” Okita asks, prodding Nobukatsu’s stomach with the end of her sandal.

“He’s always like this,” Nobunaga says, finally wriggling out of Okita’s grasp. “Hey, Katsu, finally stopped sulking and decided to join us?”

“I- um-” Nobukatsu stammers, fiddling with his crumpled cape and the timid fluttering of his flame.

“Oh, give him a break.” Kippoushi’s broad hand ruffles the top of Nobukatsu’s head before plopping his hat back into place. “You know how hard it is to get him to make up his mind about anything.”

“Hm, I guess that can’t be helped, then.” Nobunaga leans own, scooping her own hat off the ground, sharp red eyes trained on Nobukatsu’s. “You lost me my dessert, so I’m taking yours, understand?”

Such a casual demand, such little stakes. A siblings’ squabble, but not so grand as to encompass soldiers or castles. This is what Nobukatsu’s been chasing all along: not those days doubtless long forgotten by his sister, but their simple happiness that nothing would make them forget. Nobunaga thrusts a hand at him, saying, “Get up already! You look pitiful sitting like that. And hurry up, or all the hot food’s gonna be gone!”

This is no recreated history like his wish on the grail, no glorious return to childhood days that Nobukatsu had once dreamed of. It’s more; it’s perfect. Nobukatsu’s hand clasps tight around his sister’s. He yelps as she jerks him to his feet, already pulling him towards the mess hall at a run, flame-tipped ponytail flopping awkwardly against his back. Okita is at her side, and Kippoushi at his, laughing at their double and grinning at their brother— finally caught up to them at last, never to be left behind again.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> corg was like 'we don't have any katsu character analysis fic' and i was like 'fine and i need to write a fic based off lear so Bet' and then I made it a form experiment because I have Struggles
> 
> Also i was like 'fuck NaNo' and then proceeded to write at a NaNo pace for like 21 days and counting


End file.
